Pixar’s ‘Soul’ and Disney’s ‘Raya and the Last Dragon’ Both Delayed

There’s a fascinating and in some ways quite alarming new article in The New York Timesabout the state of Disney in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. While Disney is one of the biggest and most powerful media companies in the world, it’s also particularly vulnerable to the pandemic because big chunks of its business — theme parks, cruise ships — have been completely shut down by the virus.

But it doesn’t stop there. Movie theaters may reopen sooner than theme parks, but they remain closed for now, and probably for several more months at the very least. Disney has been conservative in delaying their upcoming productions, and it was only today that they pushed back their two big animated features for 2020. Soul, the latest movie from Pixar and director Pete Docter, was scheduled for a theatrical opening on June 19. Now, it will instead open in theaters on November 20, 2020.

Disney’s internal animation studio had its own production headed to theaters roughly on Soul’s new release date. That was Raya and the Last Dragon, starring Cassie Steele and Awkwafina. It was previously expected in theaters on November 25, 2020. Now, it will instead premiere on March 12, 2021.

As of the last email I got from Disney with a release calendar, the next still-scheduled Disney film is the remake of Mulan, which has already been pushed back from March to July 24. After that, there’s just a few smaller titles scheduled through the end of the summer before The King’s Man in September from Fox. Then in November there’s Black Widow and now Soul, followed by Free Guy and West Side Story in December. Obviously, all of these dates are very much subject to change.